After the failure in their attempt to hinder firstly, the election of the National Constituent Assembly (NCA) and then its setting up, the internal counter-revolution hopes that the economic war imposed on the nation gives place to the direct military aggression of the United States, since the Donald Trump administration announced the possibility of a naval blockade. President Nicolás Maduro described it as madness and noticed that the armed forces are ready to reject any attack, reinforced the border with Colombia geared at preventing a treacherous invasion and mobilized hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans willing and active to defeat the imperialist attempt.

”It’s not a laughing matter. It’s sovereignty and independence that are at risk”, said Eleazar Díaz Rangel, director of “Últimas Noticias” newspaper, as Maduro claimed that “everything they are carrying out against Venezuela will fail with the effort of our people and Venezuela will come out strengthened, increasingly freer, more independent in the economic, financial, political, diplomatic and military field”.

One could not expect anything else from the United States and a president like Donald Trump, knowing, as the American people have just realized, that he is surrounded by what he is pleased with: racist and supremacist haters who hate not only Venezuela but the entire Latin America, riddled, according to them, with "an inferior race".

"To believe that these sanctions will only hit Venezuela is like believing ... that the announcement of the construction of the electrified wall between the US-Mexico border is an aggression only to countries that have migrants in the United States. No, it is not against those countries or against Mexico, it’s against the whole Latin America and the Caribbean”, stressed Maduro.

As many people know, last Friday the president of the United States issued an executive order that bans US citizens and entities from any transactions, such as the purchase of debt bonds, with the Venezuelan state and Petróleos de Venezuela S.A. (PDVSA), which is considered the worst American aggression against Venezuela in the last 200 years.

Caracas is already responding to the aggression through the activation by the NCA of a plan to defend the economy and finances, and called on US companies that buy Venezuelan oil to an urgent meeting to fine-tune operating mechanisms after the economic war imposed by the White House.

DEMONIZATION AND DISABILITY

Within the same strategy, the director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), Mike Pompeo, said that Venezuela is influenced by Hezbollah and Iran, two of the geopolitical actors that Washington places within the "Axis of Evil," and that’s why “it can become a risk for the United States”, which has set up a real uproar so that the halberdiers who control the press join their media mechanism. This "intelligence" maneuver seeks to strengthen the story that Venezuela is a country that promotes "Islamic terrorism".

There is a great truth in this nebula of lies: the Venezuelan right is incapable of creating something, turning the board upside down and gaining popular support, thereby it makes itself dependent on the will of a president who sanctions, blocks banks and finances, and tries to isolate the country diplomatically.

That right took advantage of government mistakes to achieve a legislative victory, for the first time in seventeen years, but that control of the National Assembly became a complete stop to measures that benefit the nation, so it had to be suspended, not eliminated. Then, most Venezuelans voted for the creation of the NCA that will strengthen the Constitution and help good governance.

All this stirred the worst of the worst, removed masks from hypocrites, and united that group of genuflectors with the Cuban exiles in Miami, which dictates rules to their Venezuelan acolytes.

While poorly participating in a dialogue with the government, the ill-named Democratic Unity Board (MUD) tried to hold President Nicolás Maduro accountable for the threat of military intervention by Donald Trump, when its main leaders were protagonists of appeals to US rulers and officials to invade the country in the face of successive failures of all its violent and terrorist strategies.

Thus, reviewing the press sold to the national oligarchy, there is evidence that in 2017 important enemies of the Bolivarian Revolution, such as Julio Borges, Luis Florido and Lilian Tintori, have been photographed along with US officials, and Luis Almagro, Secretary General of the pro-American Organization of American States (OAS), while often travelling to Washington and Miami to achieve the financial blockade of the country by big international banks.

Borges has appeared smiling next to H.R. McMaster, National Security Advisor, who attended the meeting where Trump announced the military option and threatened to invade Venezuela; as Florido and Tintori have met with lawmakers Marco Rubio and Bob Menéndez, from the anti-Cuban mafia, enemies of the enemies of the Venezuelan constitutional government and promoters of the funding to the protagonists of the terrorist wave.

In other words, they are all part of the concoction that is being cooked to attack Venezuela, in a counter-revolutionary action, where the “cooks” could get burned.

Amid a country where racist groups thrive, its president pleads for an initiative that encourages that evil.

The perspective was commented last Monday, among others, by a New Herald columnist, Fabiola Santiago.

She wrote, Trump’s migratory project seeks “to make the United States white again” and that they only speak English.

Also, if approved, our current city of Miami would not exist.

In fact, she adds, the idea of the president's reformation closes the doors to people like Cuban- Americans who voted for him.

The same happens with his Latin and Haitian supporters, too stubborn on their support to a president “whose white-supremacy, and anti-immigrants agenda” is a slap on the face of a diverse country and an insult to the values with which it was founded.

Fabiola Santiago stops to wonder:

What can be expected from an administration that separates North American children from their parents and launches an initiative whose target is minorities?

The Raise Law would reduce legal immigration by 50% in the next 10 years, and would give priority to skills over family reunification, abandoning the sacrosanct migratory politics of the United States.

With sarcastic tone Fabiola Santiago says: The president could also dismantle the Statue of Liberty, and return it to France.

She warns in her article what Trump’s plan pursues is to change our racial and ethnic face, as well as to write a new speech on who we are and what we defend.

Later she says, “Trump wants that, once again, the United States to be white” and monolingual.

Besides she adds, after a long road, it he wants to pass a supremacy politics in only eight months of government.

There is a small detail that strays from that attempt, the North American people, as a whole has never favored extreme positions.

Even less the intellectual and artistic sectors that bump into the Golden Ox that wanders the White House are well-known.

The dilemma the US people are experiencing today goes from bad to worse, since they are victims of a widespread fear that made them fall into the clutches of one of the most racist presidents that ever ruled in the United States: Donald Trump.

In his yet brief power, racist attacks have multiplied everywhere; hatred is so strong that people with white skin, blonde hair and green eyes are considered inferior people, for the sole fact of being Latin American. There people say the “dirty Hispanic race”, thus tell me acquaintances from the state of Georgia, with an infamous record, for being one of the main centers for burning hundreds of thousands of blacks at the stake.

Andrés Openheimer, a reactionary journalist who is not prone to leftist considerations, voices his concern over the rise in racism on US soil, the division of families, what mankind could suffer in the future with a president like Donald Trump in the presidency of the United States.

Notorious enemy of the Cuban Revolution, Openheimer admits that Trump has separated longtime friends and created tensions in family tables, "charming the masses with rhetoric full of hatred, blaming foreigners for the problems of their country". And he recalled that during the election campaign he did not see "cars in the streets of Miami with decals supporting the presidential candidates", because people were afraid of being insulted, or that someone could scratch their cars, in addition of having little enthusiasm for the candidates, obviating the widespread idea that Florida and the support of the Miami mafia contributed to Trump’s victory.

It’s been several months since his inauguration, but the president does not change his view that most Mexican immigrants "bringing crime" and are "rapists". Racism and xenophobia have split that country as never before in recent history.

Trump encourages his audience with racist comments against Hispanics, African-Americans, Muslims and other ethnic groups. And the saddest thing is that his public celebrates it in big way.

It is not surprising that the Ku Klux Klan, closely linked with Fred, Donald's father, is still celebrating euphorically his arrival in power, and leads victorious marches in various states, while neo-Nazi and white supremacist groups now feel represented in the White House.

Thanks to Trump, the ideal of neo-Nazi groups in an Aryan country, once relegated to the darkest corners of the Internet, is now closer to socially acceptable political discourse.

A recent report by the Los Angeles County Human Relations Commission states that hate crimes against Latinos in that city rose by an impressive 69 percent.

And another study from the Southern Poverty Law Center states that Trump's presence "is producing an alarming level of fear and anxiety among children of color and increasing racial and ethnic tensions in the classroom".

The report adds that "teachers have noted a rise in abuse and intimidation of students whose race, religion or nationality has been targeted" by the current president.

It is symptomatic how a reactionary like Openheimer says he did not vote for Trump because he is a demagogue that incites hatred, who is supported by neo-Nazi groups, who is dividing Americans, and who speaks as if he were above the Constitution, an opinion highly shared by progressive Noam Chomsky, famous US political scientist and linguist, who considers that Trump's popularity is due to "fear" and is the result of a "society broken" by neoliberalism.

"People feel isolated, helpless and victims of more powerful forces, which they do not understand or cannot influence," said the 87-year-old intellectual, who claimed his age allows him to compare the current situation in the US election campaign with the 1930s, during which United States suffered the so-called great economic depression.

“Poverty and suffering were much greater, however, even among the poor and the unemployed, there was "a sense of hope, which we lack today”, the scholar said.

He attributed it to the growth of a militant labor movement "and" the existence of political organizations outside the main currents and added that the fact that pre-candidate Bernie Sanders and UK’s Labor Party leader Jeremy Corbyn, who lead popular ideas implemented in the 20th century, are now labeled as extremists, indicates that the whole political spectrum "has turned to the right during the neoliberal period".

The also US activist praised Sanders, although he considered the politician had no chance, because of the "largely rigged" election system, which rules in the United States. So, shortly before the elections, he warned that the victory of the Republicans would have serious consequences for mankind.

Some of President Trump’s lawyers are exploring ways to limit or undercut special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s Russia investigation, building a case against what they allege are his conflicts of interest and discussing the president’s authority to grant pardons, according to people familiar with the effort.

Trump has asked his advisers about his power to pardon aides, family members and even himself in connection with the probe, according to one of those people. A second person said Trump’s lawyers have been discussing the president’s pardoning powers among themselves.

One adviser said the president has simply expressed a curiosity in understanding the reach of his pardoning authority, as well as the limits of Mueller’s investigation.

Do the political preferences of Mueller's team risk its independence?

“This is not in the context of, ‘I can’t wait to pardon myself,’ ” a close adviser said.

With the Russia investigation continuing to widen, Trump’s lawyers are working to corral the probe and question the propriety of the special counsel’s work. They are actively compiling a list of Mueller’s alleged potential conflicts of interest, which they say could serve as a way to stymie his work, according to several of Trump’s legal advisers.

A conflict of interest is one of the possible grounds that can be cited by an attorney general to remove a special counsel from office under Justice Department regulations that set rules for the job.

Responding to this story on Friday after it was published late Thursday, one of Trump’s attorneys, John Dowd, said it was “not true” and “nonsense.”

“The President’s lawyers are cooperating with special counsel Robert Mueller on behalf of the President,” he said.

Other advisers said the president is also irritated by the notion that Mueller’s probe could reach into his and his family’s finances.

Trump has been fuming about the probe in recent weeks as he has been informed about the legal questions that he and his family could face. His primary frustration centers on why allegations that his campaign coordinated with Russia should spread into scrutinizing many years of Trump dealmaking. He has told aides he was especially disturbed after learning Mueller would be able to access several years of his tax returns.

Trump has repeatedly refused to make his tax returns public after first claiming he could not do so because he was under audit or after promising to release them after an IRS audit was completed. All presidents since Jimmy Carter have released their tax returns.

July 19, 2017President Trump speaks at a luncheon with Republican leadership about health care in the State Dining Room of the White House.Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post

“If you’re looking at Russian collusion, the president’s tax returns would be outside that investigation,” said a close adviser to the president.

Further adding to the challenges facing Trump’s outside lawyers, the team’s spokesman, Mark Corallo, resigned on Thursday. Corallo confirmed Friday that he has resigned but declined to comment further.

Corallo’s departure is part of a larger restructuring of Trump’s team undertaken in recent days. Marc Kasowitz, Trump’s New York-based personal attorney who had been leading the effort, will take a reduced role, people familiar with the team said. Meanwhile, veteran Washington lawyer John Dowd, hired last month, will take the lead in responding to the Special Counsel and Congressional inquiries. Jay Sekulow, a lawyer who has been a familiar face in conservative media in recent years, will serve as the group’s public face, appearing frequently on television.

Sekulow said in an interview Thursday that the president and his legal team are intent on making sure Mueller stays within the boundaries of his assignment as special counsel. He said they will complain directly to Mueller if necessary.

“The fact is that the president is concerned about conflicts that exist within the special counsel’s office and any changes in the scope of the investigation,” Sekulow said. “The scope is going to have to stay within his mandate. If there’s drifting, we’re going to object.”

Sekulow cited Bloomberg News reports that Mueller is scrutinizing some of Trump’s business dealings, including with a Russian oligarch who purchased a Palm Beach mansion from Trump for $95 million in 2008.

“They’re talking about real estate transactions in Palm Beach several years ago,” Sekulow said. “In our view, this is far outside the scope of a legitimate investigation.”

The president has long called the FBI investigation into his campaign’s possible coordination with the Russians a “witch hunt.” But now, Trump is coming face-to-face with a powerful investigative team that is able to study evidence of any crime it encounters in the probe — including tax fraud, lying to federal agents and interference in the investigation.

“This is Ken Starr times 1,000,” said one lawyer involved in the case, referring to the independent counsel who oversaw an investigation that eventually led to House impeachment proceedings against President Bill Clinton. “Of course, it’s going to go into his finances.”

Following Trump’s decision to fire FBI Director James B. Comey — in part because of his displeasure with the FBI’s Russia investigation — Deputy Attorney General Rod J. Rosenstein appointed Mueller as special counsel in a written order. That order gave Mueller broad authority to investigate links between the Russian government and the Trump campaign, as well as “any matters that arose or may arise directly from the investigation” and any crimes committed in response to the investigation, such as perjury or obstruction of justice.

Mueller’s probe has already expanded to include an examination of whether Trump obstructed justice in his dealings with Comey, as well as the business activities of Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law.

Trump’s team could potentially challenge whether a broad probe of Trump’s finances prior to his candidacy could be considered a matter that arose “directly” from an inquiry into possible collusion with a foreign government.

The president’s legal representatives have also identified what they allege are several conflicts of interest facing Mueller, such as donations to Democrats by some of his prosecutors.

Another potential conflict claim is an allegation that Mueller and Trump National Golf Club in Northern Virginia had a dispute over membership fees when Mueller resigned as a member in 2011, two White House advisers said. A spokesman for Mueller said there was no dispute when Mueller, who was FBI director at the time, left the club.

Trump also took public aim on Wednesday at Attorney General Jeff Sessions and Rosenstein, whose actions led to Mueller’s appointment. In an interview with the New York Times Wednesday, the president said he never would have nominated Sessions if he knew he was going to recuse himself from the case.

Some Republicans in frequent touch with the White House said they viewed the president’s decision to publicly air his disappointment with Sessions as a warning sign that the attorney general’s days were numbered. Several senior aides were described as “stunned” when Sessions announced Thursday morning he would stay on at the Justice Department.

Another Republican in touch with the administration described the public steps as part of a broader effort aimed at “laying the groundwork to fire” Mueller.

Law enforcement officials described Sessions as increasingly distant from the White House and the FBI because of the strains of the Russia investigation.

Traditionally, Justice Department leaders have sought to maintain a certain degree of autonomy from the White House as a means of ensuring prosecutorial independence.

But Sessions’s situation is more unusual, law enforcement officials said, because he has angered the president for apparently being too independent while also angering many at the FBI for his role in the president’s firing of Comey.

As a result, there is far less communication among those three key parts of the government than in years past, several officials said.

Currently, the discussions of pardoning authority by Trump’s legal team are purely theoretical, according to two people familiar with the ongoing conversations. But if Trump pardoned himself in the face of the ongoing Mueller investigation, it would set off a legal and political firestorm, first around the question of whether a president can use the constitutional pardon power in that way.

“This is a fiercely debated but unresolved legal question,” said Brian C. Kalt, a constitutional law expert at Michigan State University who has written extensively on the question.

The power to pardon is granted to the president in Article II, Section 2, of the Constitution, which gives the commander in chief the power to “grant Reprieves and Pardons for Offences against the United States, except in Cases of Impeachment.” That means pardon authority extends to federal criminal prosecution but not to state level or impeachment inquiries.

No president has sought to pardon himself, so no courts have reviewed it. Although Kalt says the weight of the law argues against a president pardoning himself, he says the question is open and predicts such an action would move through the courts all the way to the Supreme Court.

“There is no predicting what would happen,” said Kalt, author of the book, “Constitutional Cliffhangers: A Legal Guide for Presidents and Their Enemies.” It includes chapters on the ongoing debate over whether presidents can be prosecuted while in office and on whether a president can issue a pardon to himself.

Other White House advisers have tried to temper Trump, urging him to simply cooperate with the probe and stay silent on his feelings about the investigation.

On Monday, lawyer Ty Cobb, newly brought into the White House to handle responses to the Russian probe, convened a meeting with the president and his team of lawyers, according to two people briefed on the meeting. Cobb, who is not yet on the White House payroll, was described as attempting to instill some discipline in how the White House handles queries about the case. But Trump surprised many of his aides by speaking at length about the probe to the New York Times two days later. Cobb, who officially joins the White House team at the end of the month, declined to comment for this article.

Some note that the Constitution does not explicitly prohibit a president from pardoning himself. On the other side, experts say that by definition a pardon is something you can only give to someone else. There is also a common-law canon that prohibits individuals from serving as a judge in their own case. “For example, we would not allow a judge to preside over his or her own trial,” Kalt said.

A president can pardon an individual at any point, including before the person is charged with a crime, and the scope of a presidential pardon can be very broad. President Gerald Ford pardoned former president Richard M. Nixon preemptively for offenses he “committed or may have committed” while in office.

A synthesis of what has been written over the past six months by some of its most important publications allows showing a likely response.

From the different analyses we can gather the following general title:

Is Trump’s election symptom of a greater evil: the decay of the U.S.?

They recall that once again polls put his approval rating in 37 per cent, “the lowest of any US president after a few months in office”.

They endorse the opinion of many when they declare themselves concerned about his real capacity to rule a power like the U.S.

And what have they said about the new thing in the last half century?

Although they are the most productive ones in the world, they’ve lost the so-called puritan ethics of work, key in its development in previous centuries.

The modest customs of Protestantism were replaced by an uncontrolled consumerism.

According to examined outlets, earlier, part of the citizenship kept money in saving accounts.

“Today, credit cards make families get indebted and live “from one day to the next”.

“Or worse. When they are paid, they’ve spent the amount of the check received”.

This is not all; preschoolers demand expensive high-tech cell phones.

At other times, they’ve noticed that children are no longer seen playing in the streets. And where are they? Held at home watching television, their tablets or videogames. Families seldom sit together for dinner, and if they do so, each member usually watches his/her cell phone.

In the age of communications, those articles state, “human beings talk less among us”.

The number of people suffering from depression has increased, as well as another series of health disorders.

At the end, a tragic confession, pretty well adjusted to the reality the United States is living today. Politics has also changed; it moves itself with money and more money unprecedentedly. The decision of the Supreme Court to enable companies make unlimited "donations" to electoral crusades "has made a serious problem get worse".

What is spent on each election is immoral, because politicians tie themselves with those who give them money. But there’s an overwhelming example as regard the last paragraph and that consists in the following: Multimillion-dollar National Rifle Association (NAR) has hindered any sensible policy on arms sale control in U.S.

How? It has distributed an ocean of dollars among those who approve laws in the Capitol and the executive power in Washington.

It’s a society where any movie or television celebrity is more valued than a school teacher.

A sportsperson earns much more money than a university professor, a doctor or a scientist who investigates a cure for cancer.

The military budget is multiplied, but the education one decreases. Then, it outlines an interesting conclusion that approaches why Donald Trump reached the presidency.

Perhaps these problems and confusion on the scale of values led so many people to vote for Trump.

He knew how to tell them about their frustrations, but so far he hasn’t presented any coherent plan to ease them.

Nevertheless, he received less direct votes in the 2016 presidential election than his opponent Hillary Clinton.

In other words, as it happened in the 2000 election, in which the loser won and the winner lost.

Construction on the wall Donald Trump made central to his presidential campaign—one that he repeatedly promised would run the length of the U.S.-Mexico border, geological and fiscal impossibilities be damned—has yet to begin, which might be a good thing, since Trump apparently has some new design notes for how he’d like the wall to be built.

Asked by reporters aboard Air Force One on Wednesday night about the wall, the president offered several perplexing new details about his plans and insisted that he was “not joking” about adding solar panels, a proposal he earnestly suggested would help cover the project’s estimated $21.6 billion cost. “There is a chance that we can do a solar wall,” Trump said. “We have major companies looking at that. Look, there’s no better place for solar than the Mexico border—the southern border. And there is a very good chance we can do a solar wall, which would actually look good. But there is a very good chance we could do a solar wall.”

Trump went on to say that the wall needs one thing: transparency. “You have to be able to see through it,” he explained. “In other words, if you can’t see through that wall—so it could be a steel wall with openings, but you have to have openings because you have to see what’s on the other side of the wall.”

The wall needs to be see-through, the president continued, because drug dealers may otherwise throw large bags of drugs over the wall to the other side, and hit innocent passers-by. “As horrible as it sounds, when they throw the large sacks of drugs over, and if you have people on the other side of the wall, you don’t see them—they hit you on the head with 60 pounds of stuff? It’s over,” he added. “As crazy as that sounds, you need transparency through that wall. But we have some incredible designs.”

Trump promised on the campaign trail that he would find a way to make Mexico pay for the wall. A new spending bill released by House Republicans this week proposes $1.6 billion to begin building the border wall. Mexico has no plans to pay for any wall along the U.S.-Mexico border, transparent or otherwise.

The effects of climate change may extend further than melting glaciers and rising sea levels, according to a new study which says that hot temperatures may cause up to 30 percent of airplanes to be grounded in coming decades.

The study, published in the journal Climatic Change on Thursday, says that 10 to 30 percent of fully loaded airplanes may at some point be forced to adapt during the hottest part of the day.

Those adaptations include removing fuel, cargo, or passengers, or waiting for cooler hours to fly.

The potential take-off problems would be due to the fact that as air warms, it spreads out and its density declines.

“In thinner air, wings generate less lift as a plane races along the runway. Thus, depending on the aircraft model, runway length, and other factors, at some point a packed plane may be unable to take off safely if the temperature gets too high,” Columbia University, whose researchers took part in the study, wrote in a press release.

“Weight must be dumped, or else the flight delayed or canceled,” it continues.

The study’s authors estimate that fuel capacities and payload weights would have to be reduced as much as four percent for some aircraft.

To put those numbers in perspective, an average 160-seat aircraft would need roughly 12 or 13 less passengers to reach a four-percent weight reduction.

However, if carbon emissions were to somehow be sharply reduced in the near future, those reductions could amount to as little as 0.5 percent.

Planes with lower temperature tolerances would struggle more, according to the study. Airports which have shorter runways, or which are located in hotter parts of the world or in higher elevations will also suffer more than others.

Airports which would be in danger in those cases include New York’s LaGuardia, which has short runways. Dubai International Airport in the United Arab Emirates would suffer due to its very high temperatures.

“Airports probably less affected because they are in temperate regions and have long runways include New York’s JFK, London Heathrow and Paris’s Charles de Gaulle,” the Columbia press release states.

In theory, the potential problems could be somewhat mitigated with new engine or body designs for aircraft, or expanded runways, according to study co-author Radley Horton, a climatologist at Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory.

However, such solutions are unlikely to be implemented, as planes are already highly engineered for efficiency, and there simply isn’t room to expand runways in major cities such as New York.

“The sooner climate can be incorporated into mid- and long-range plans, the more effective adaptation efforts can be,” said co-author Ethan Coffel, a Columbia University PhD student.

Categories

In Sancti Spiritus People also Shouted ´I am Fidel´

Your browser does not support the video tag.

Cubasí.cu interviewed translator Aracelia del Valle from Escambray website on people’s reaction for the journey of the caravan carrying the remains of Commander in Chief Fidel Castro to Santiago de Cuba.